Part 4 (1/2)

”If you're right,” she said slowly, ”then Larry is in real danger. Stark couldn't let word of the mine leak out, and he can't hold those men forever. He'd have to- to kill them.” She turned suddenly widened eyes on me. ”You have to help me, Mr.

Morgan.”

”How? I doubt if I can get any more information than I already have from here.”

”You could go to the moon and get proof. You could get it to the newsmen, or the Pentagon, or someone-”

”Just a second, Mrs. Holst. I'm afraid you've got the wrong guy for this job.

First of all, I can't get to the moon-I haven't got the money for a commercial flight, and there's an eight-month waiting list, anyway. Secondly, this isn't my field. You'd be better off hiring a private eye. And thirdly, our theory may be completely wrong, and if it is I'd be sticking my nose deeply into army business, a practice the Pentagon takes a very dim view of. I'm a Dreamsender, not a professional kamikaze. I've done my part here.”

She looked at me with an expression that was scared, tired, and cold, all at once. ”All right, Mr. Morgan. Thank you for your help in contacting my husband.

I'll do the rest alone.”

”How?”

”I have a military pa.s.s that ent.i.tles me to get an immediate seat on a commercial lunar flight. I think our savings can cover a round-trip ticket.” She stood up. ”I'll get to Larry somehow.”

”Sit down, Louise.” She did so, not batting an eye at my use of her first name, and waited. I stared out the window for a half minute or so, wis.h.i.+ng I weren't so softheaded. But I had little choice. It was a cinch she could never get close enough to find out anything-she was probably known on the base, and Stark knew she had tried to talk to her husband. He'd be watching for her to show up. And if he was up to something illegal, he might decide that he couldn't let her live, either.

She'd just be saving him the trouble of coming down here and getting her. ”All right, Louise. If you can pay for the ticket and if we can figure out a way to get me aboard a flight with your pa.s.s, I'll take a crack at it.”

She didn't throw her arms around me or roll her eyes heavenward or do any of the standard grade-B-movie things. She just sat there with melting eyes and said, ”Thank you, Mr. Morgan.”

”Call me Jeff,” I said. ”Let's get to work.”

Besides, I'd always wanted to visit the moon.

”Last call, Flight 126 for Collins s.p.a.ce Station and Prinz Crater, Luna.”

That was my cue. Picking up my carry-on bag, I trotted around a corner and went to the check-in desk. ”Larry Holst,” I told the man, handing him the ticket Louise had purchased a few hours previously with her priority pa.s.s. I hoped he wouldn't look carefully at it.

He did. ”Uh, sir? This ticket is made out to Ms. L. Holst.”

I craned my neck to look. ”You're right,” I agreed with what I hoped was the proper touch of amused surprise in my voice. ”I never even noticed.”

”I'm sorry, but I'll have to see some identification, sir.”

”Sure.” This was the touchy part, but Louise and I had planned for this and if I'd timed it correctly it should work. Pulling out a thick wallet, I began rummaging through it. Tossing a couple of Larry Holst's credit cards on the desk, I commented, ”My driver's license is in here somewhere.”

The clerk glanced at the name on the credit cards, then at his watch. ”Never mind, Mr. Holst, this will do. You'll have to hurry now, they'll be sealing the s.h.i.+p in two minutes. Right through that door there, sir, and have a good flight.”

I made it with a minute to spare and sank into my seat thankfully. So far, so good, and for the next few days I was in the clear. Louise had given me the code numbers that went with Larry's credit cards, so I could charge my room and meals on Collins without raising any suspicions anywhere. But Collins and Prinz Crater were purely civilian stations, after all, and as long as I wasn't using stolen cards no one really cared whether I was Larry Holst or not. The real problem would be trying to get in touch with Larry at Krieger without getting caught.

Well, one crisis at a time. Right now I needed to give my attention to the stewardess as she explained how to use the emergency oxygen masks. Fastening my seat belts, I decided to sit back and try to make myself relax.

Prinz Crater, located at the south of the Harbinger Mountain range, was fairly unusual in that it was only a partial crater, its rim forming a semicircle that opened to the south. The colony had been built just outside the crater, nestled into the shadow of the northern rim, and consisted of a half-dozen domed buildings connected by underground pa.s.sages. My room at the Prinz Hilton seemed rather Spartan-especially considering the price-but a careful look at the clientele suggested that luxury would have been wasted anyway. Prinz seemed to be the major s.p.a.ceport for both civilian traffic to Krieger Base and scientific parties bound for the diggings in the Schroter's Valley region, and I doubted whether either group cared much what the Hilton's rooms looked like. Ordinary tourists seemed a little scarce, but there were enough around to keep me from feeling too conspicuous.

I spent my first day on the moon in and near the hotel, learning about the s.p.a.cesuits and other rental gear, and studying maps of the region. After dinner that evening I discovered that the Hilton had a colorful pamphlet on lunar history.

Taking a copy back to my room, I sprawled across the bed and read it through carefully. Of special interest was a section on the army's military bases, a section that included a sketch of the noncla.s.sified areas of Krieger Base, Krieger ”D”

barracks, Larry had said; only there was no ”D” barracks listed on the map.

I stared at the page for several minutes, pondering this unexpected problem.

Louise and I had worked out a way for me to get in touch with Larry, but I needed to know at least approximately where he was being kept. Obviously, I had misread the information during that first confused contact; just as obviously, there was nothing for me to do except try it again. I wasn't crazy about the idea, but it was that or catch a flight back to Earth. Besides, he was bound to have calmed down somewhat by now.

My first attempt that night failed-Larry was apparently not yet asleep-but I made it on the second try. The scenery around Larry this time seemed relatively quiet, though there were rumblings like thunder in the distance. ”Captain Holst?” I called. ”This is Jefferson Morgan again.”

He turned from the circuit he had been working on and faced me. ”What do you want?”

”I'm here to help you,” I told him, trying to ignore the unfriendly look he was giving me. ”Where are you?”

”Special Duty Barracks, Krieger D. Why are you here?”

”Your wife asked me to help you, remember? She-”

”You leave Louise out of this!” he shouted, unfriendliness turning to outright hostility in an instant. The whole dream reflected the change; thunder crashed nearby and a strong wind began to blow. Louise appeared to one side and Larry sprang over to stand between us. Protecting her from me? ”Go away!” he yelled, shaking his fists at me. ”Leave me alone, do you hear? Leave both of us alone!”

”Okay, okay, I'm leaving,” I said. Struck by a thought, I added, ”Don't worry, Stark won't hear about this from me.”

That got me a reaction, all right, but it was so fast and multifaceted that I couldn't read anything at all from it. I gave up and broke the contact.

I lay in bed for a few minutes afterwards, thinking about what I'd seen and felt. At least I now knew where he was, more or less: not Krieger ”D” barracks but a barracks in Krieger D. The latter, I remembered from the maps, was a small crater about twenty kilometers from the main base. It was only about three kilometers across, so I should have no trouble finding the barracks itself.

And I was going to find it. Larry had been angry, hostile, and threatening, but behind all of that I had been able to sense another emotion: fear. Larry Holst was still afraid of something, and more than ever I wanted to know what. I had undertaken this job mainly from a lopsided sense of duty, but my own native curiosity was starting to take a keen interest in things.

There was still one ch.o.r.e to do before I could close shop for the night. I contacted Louise, a.s.sured her Larry was all right, and told her I would try to contact him directly the next afternoon. It still bothered my scientific intuition that dreamsending from the moon felt no different than if Louise was across the street, but I had too many other things on my mind to worry about it. Later, maybe, when all this was over, I'd write a letter to some journal somewhere. For the moment, I was just glad that this time all I had to do was send information, and not try to receive any.

Finally, message complete, I set the alarm for seven o'clock and settled down for a good night's sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day.

”Good morning,” I said briskly to the clerk at the rental counter. ”I'd like to check out a suit and buggy for the day.”

”For a long trip, sir?”

”Probably. I want to go exploring a little around the Aristarchus Rille area.

Pick up some rocks, get a few pictures, that sort of thing.”

He consulted his list, confirmed I'd been checked out on the equipment yesterday by one of the staff. ”I can let you have one of the Selenes, Mr. Holst; number eight. Is that satisfactory?”

”Fine.” The solar-augmented batteries of a Selene, I had been told, gave the buggy an almost unlimited range. Even with the decoy run I would have to make, the round trip to Krieger should be easily less than three hundred kilometers.

The suit and Selene were delivered in ten minutes, one of the hotel staff then taking another thirty to help me double-check everything, but within an hour I was tooling northwest along the sun-lit lunar landscape at the rip-roaring speed of forty kilometers an hour. The terrain was pretty hilly for a while, until I had crossed Prinz Rille I, but then it generally settled down, and I was able to devote less of my already busy mind to the ch.o.r.e of driving.It took me a bit over an hour to reach Aristarchus Rille V. Finding a close-set pair of hills, I parked the Selene between them and set to work with the buggy's toolkit. What I was doing now was not only illegal but was the act of a suicidal idiot as well, and I could feel sweat gathering on my forehead. Carefully removing the self-contained radio beacon from its hiding place under the seat, I took it outside and left it beside a recognizable rock formation. The beacon was, naturally, designed so that it couldn't be turned off and was continually monitored from Prinz. To those observers, I would simply have left my vehicle parked while I went exploring on foot, and my side trip north to Krieger would go completely unnoticed. But, by the same token, if something happened to me, I couldn't be found by a rescue team. That one I tried not to think about.

It was only another fifty kilometers to Krieger D, but I took the time to give the entire Krieger crater system a wide berth. Swinging east, I circled Krieger D at a distance of about ten kilometers and made my cautious approach from the northeast. I reached the rim without incident and, after parking the Selene in a convenient depression, I began setting up my apparatus.

Among its equipment the Selene carried a very fine tripod-mounted monocular adapted for s.p.a.cesuit use. Setting this up, I scanned the shadows at the south end of the crater, the likeliest place for the barracks to be. I wasn't disappointed. There it was, a squat building with a row of porthole-type windows near the ground, looking sort of like a cross between a cliff dwelling and a Quonset hut. Jumping the monoculars power, I took a look through all the windows I could see from my position, hoping fervently Larry was in an outside room. If he wasn't, the plan Louise and I had cooked up would be useless. But again I was lucky: neatly framed in the third porthole from the end was Larry Holst, writing busily at a foldaway desk.